Risultati della ricerca

A model with private information is constructed that supports conventional arguments for a government monopoly in supplying circulating media of exchange. The model also yields predictions, including rate-of-return dominance of circulating media of exchange, that are consistent with observations from free banking regimes and fiat money regimes. In a laissez faire banking equilibrium, fiat money is not valued, and the resulting allocation is not Pareto optimal. However, if private agents are restricted from issuing circulating notes, there exists an equilibrium with valued fiat money that Pareto dominates the laissez faire equilibrium and is constrained Pareto optimal.

The classical and early neoclassical economists knew that the essential function of money was its role as a medium of exchange. Recently, this idea has been formalized using search-theoretic noncooperative equilibrium models of the exchange process. The goal of this paper is to use a simple model of this class to analyze four substantive issues in monetary economics: the interaction between specialization and exchange, dual fiat currency regimes, the welfare improving role of money, and the susceptibility of monetary economies to extrinsic uncertainty.